More

Looking death in the face

Palestinian Lutherans struggle to hold on

Abdel Majoud Awes couldn't get to the dialysis machine 10 minutes away. Israeli soldiers had turned him away at the Nablus checkpoint for two weeks. Finally his body grew so swollen he had to call an ambulance, which also was turned back at the checkpoint.

"I was looking death in the face," Awes said. To save his life, a friend carried the 250-pound Awes a mile through the hills to meet a $50 taxi headed for a hospital farther away — Augusta Victoria, a Lutheran World Federation facility in Jerusalem.